[Open-transport] OKFest 2014

[Stefan Kaufmann]

On 30.03.2014 20:56, Peter Hicks wrote:

> "Enabling" is the word that struck me as most important here.  As you
> pointed out, it may not be unwillingness to open data - more that the
> benefits aren't known.

I'm still in the process of validating that through an evaluation, at 
least for German operators, right now ;)


> What if we discussed a framework to make automatic vehicle location a
> commodity item?  For example, some minicab (like a taxi) companies in
> Great Britain are no more than cars with a special licence and a
> smartphone taking care of sending jobs to the right drivers, showing the
> fare, etc.  If we had something like that for small operators - because
> most smartphones have GPS and at least 3G data - we could help build the
> infrastructure to create data about the small operators.

I had been thinking about that a while ago, only to find out this is 
already on the market ;) Trapeze Group offers a smartphone solution as 
“RBL Light”. The free/open source aspect still needs adressing, IMO, and 
Trapeze's smartphone solution still won't cut it for operators wishing 
to interface with their vehicle head signs. For German operators, that 
would mean being able to interface with the IBIS onboard computer (which 
can, however, be solved rather inexpensively. I only haven't yet found a 
transit operator willing to let me and some fellow students play around 
with their vehicles, some Raspberry Pis and matching interface boards :D)

Stefan's solution sounds like a wonderful jump into this direction, 
though I haven't found much information on it publicly yet. Stefan! Moar 
info! :)

I'd like to see the next milestones for such a solution outlined, in 
order to work on this in a coordinated fashion. For instance, the 
Institute for Distributed Systems at uulm is now offering thesis topics 
related to Open Data; so far mostly around GTFS[1]. If we were to 
package the next steps, we might be able to work on this cooperatively, 
drawing in young students through their masters' theses in the process :)

regards,
-stk

[1] <http://www.uni-ulm.de/in/vs/studentische-projekte/ulmapi.html>